Ragnar: A Time Travel Romance (Mists of Albion Book 2)

by Joanna Bell

  The Lord of the estate was seated on a chair that itself sat on a wooden platform raised a few inches higher than the rest of the floor. A white fur lay around his shoulders and leather straps bound more fur around his calves and feet. If I'd had to guess I could have put the man in his fifties, with the graying hair that lay across his shoulders and his weather-worn features. His eyes narrowed as he beheld me and in his gaze I saw something I recognized – intelligence.

  "A Northwoman?" He asked – and I couldn't tell if he was addressing me or the whole room. By the time I'd opened my mouth to try to respond, he spoke again. "A Northwoman, Baldric? By the way you told it yesterday eve, I thought you'd encountered a lady giant at Oyster Bay. This one's bigger than most, to be sure, but you're telling me she got the best of you? And then, today of almost all three of you?"

  It was only then that I noticed the other two men – Eadward and Thurgis and some others I didn't recognize – seated in the shadows along the sides of the room. They were shifting uncomfortably at the Lord's questioning of their prowess, but once again Baldric jumped in.

  "My Lord! With respect, she threw poison in their eyes. A great red mist of such strength it left them unable to see or even to breath for many moments!"

  The Lord fixed his eyes on Baldric. "Unable to breath, eh? Is that what you say? I'm surprised to see them still alive, then, if what you say is true."

  "It's true," another voice piped up – one of the two who'd been on the receiving end of my pepper spray. "My eyes burn still, my Lord. My wife tried to wash them with boiled water and dressed them with dock leaves, but in truth it just made the pain worse. I can still feel the poison in my mouth and –"

  "Come here!" The Lord boomed suddenly. "If you've truly been poisoned, come here and show me these eyes you say burn still with it!"

  "Show him, Thurgis," Baldric urged, as I noted with some relief that the attention had, at least momentarily, been taken off me. The smaller of the two men I had encountered in the woods stood up and made his way respectfully to the Lord, where he kneeled and turned his head towards the light emanating from one of two large candles placed on small wooden tables that sat on either side of the Lord's chair.

  "There is some redness," I heard the Lord say as he examined Thurgis's eyes. "Some swelling, too. Poison was it, Thurgis? Is that what you say?"

  But Thurgis was not as eager to give the impression that he'd been bested by some kind of superwoman as his friend Baldric. He nodded his head. "Aye my Lord, but as you can see I stand here before you alive and hale, excepting the painful eyes and mouth, so I'm not sure I can say it was poison. It was definitely the –"

  "Poison it was!" Baldric cut in, shouting pompously over the conversation. "I saw its effects with my own eyes, Lord, there can be no mistaking –"

  "Oh sit down, Baldric," the Lord responded with a weary wave of his hand. "I've enough dramatics with my daughters – the last thing I need is more from you."

  With an exaggerated sigh, Baldric sat on a spindly wooden chair at the side of the room, an aggrieved look on his face. The Lord continued the inspection of his Thurgis for a few more minutes, really taking his time, and then gestured for him to return to his spot at the side of the room. He then turned back to me.

  "What is it you used on my men, woman? Juice of the false-berry? Thurgis and Baldric say the liquid was red, and false-berry juice is white as milk. Tell me what it was, and how you got it."

  With the Lord's simple command to tell him what it was I'd sprayed his men with, I felt all the eyes in the room back on me. I opened my mouth, which had still not thawed entirely, and began to stutter something out:

  "I – uh, I, my Lord, it was a, um –"

  My mind ran utterly blank, unable in its fear to come up with anything even resembling a flimsy excuse. False-berry? Is that what the Lord had mentioned? What the hell was a 'false-berry'?

  The Lord did not take his eyes off me as I stammered and blinked in front of him like an idiot, and his steady gaze only served to unnerve me more fully.

  "I didn't mean to," I said eventually, deciding that an apologetic tone was better than nothing. "I didn't mean to hurt your men. It wasn't poison. They're not dead are they? See – look, they're fine! I didn't want to hurt anyone, Lord. It –"

  The Lord held up a hand suddenly and I stopped talking. "The girl's full of excuses," he commented and there were a few nods in response. "And look at her – a Northwoman you say, Baldric? The Northwomen are more robust than our kind, but look at this one – look at her height and those sturdy limbs. She doesn't sound like any Northwoman I've ever heard, either. Where is it you're from, girl? And don't answer me with a mouthful of pudding again, lest my patience begin to wear thin."

  I was pretty sure I'd just been warned not to give another weak, meandering answer to the Lord of the estate. But in the relative warmth of the big house, the blood had begin to flow inside me again and my thoughts were racing with plans and priorities. Number one of which was to delay any hangings from the ramparts for as long as possible, so as to give myself enough time to find a way out of that place, back to the tree and back to 2017, with or without my stupid phone. I barely suppressed a loud, bitter explosion of laughter at how quickly the possession of that phone had gone from near necessity to totally unimportant. Why did I ever think it mattered enough to come back to this place, and to take such a risk?

  "I'm not a Northwoman," I said in a quiet but mostly steady voice. "I'm not from here, either. I'm lost. I lost my way in the woods a few days ago and all I want now is to go home to my family."

  "A high family you're from, is it?" The Lord asked, gesturing for me to come closer. I inched towards him and averted my eyes as he examined me from a closer angle. "I've never seen teeth so straight and white. Not on my own children – not even on the King's children. Never!"

  "Aye," Esa chimed in. "I noticed it, too. Northwoman or East Angle, she's no peasant."

  The Lord was looking at me, awaiting an answer. "Yes," I nodded quickly, assuming that by 'high' family he meant one of high status – one he may not want to anger by executing their daughter. "A very high family, Lord."

  "What's your father's name, then? I know all the Lords from all the estates in the Kingdom of East Anglia – and further yet than that. Which estate is it you come from, girl?"

  I refused to show how afraid I was. Instead I met the Lord's gaze straight on before answering his question. "It's farther away than that. It's east of –"

  I stopped then, as a collective drawing back occurred in the room, triggered by my use of the word 'east' and followed almost at once by open frowns and hostile glances.

  "South, I mean! I'm very cold and frightened, Lord, please forgive me. I come from the south."

  "Wessex?!" Baldric bellowed, leaping to his feet as if I'd somehow impugned his honor by not being a Northwoman. "My Lord, listen to me, how can a woman alone have come this far north? It defies belief, my –"

  Once again, the Lord held up his hand, sighing this time. "It's been a long ride today, hasn't it? I tire earlier than is my habit. Take the woman downstairs and put her with the animals – make sure to tie her firmly and leave water for her thirst. I'll deal with the pressing matters when the sun rises."

  Shortly I found myself exactly where the Lord had told Esa to put me – tied to a corner post of one of the animal pens that filled the bottom floor of the big house. Beside me, the Lord's enormous guard placed a large bowl of not-entirely-clean looking water close enough so I could lower my head into and left me there without another word. After he left, I slumped back against the post, not even bothering to shoo it away when one of the hairy pigs stuck his snout into my water and took a long, noisy drink.

  It was night time then, which meant it was night time back in 2017, in River Falls. And in the UK. I knew I didn't have much time – in fact I knew, given the hysteria around Paige's disappearance, that it may already have been too late. If my parents or sister or any of my friends got ant
sy and called the police when I stopped answering my phone, it wasn't going to take those police long to find my car abandoned less than half a mile away from Paige Renner's last known location.

  I struggled fruitlessly against my restraints at the thought of my family worrying about me – fearing that something terrible had befallen me, the way everyone assumed it had Paige – but it was, once again, no use. The ropes used to bind me were thick and strong, and I could feel that there was no way I was breaking out of them.

  Esa had taken me to the toilet before tying me up for the night – well, I say 'toilet' – what I mean is he'd taken me out back of the Lord's dwelling and unceremoniously instructed me to piss on the ground if I didn't want to spend the night holding it in. That meant, I hoped, that I would be untied and taken outside again come the morning. If Esa was distracted for even a moment, or if I could somehow manage to kick him in the balls hard enough, I could make a run for it.

  But I couldn't make a run for it. Even if I could somehow manage to outwit or, hilariously, physically best a man who had at least 100 pounds on me, there were guards at the gates and no way out except through them.

  I gave one more sharp tug against the ropes holding my wrists, tortured with scenes conjured up in my mind: somber police officers arriving on my parent's doorstep, telling them in low voices that their daughter was missing. The newscasts would soon commence after that, if I didn't turn up, lurid headlines, more grist for the mills of the conspiracy theorists and doom and gloomers that had come crawling out of the woodwork when Paige went missing.

  More than I was able to torture myself with that what-ifs, though, I was tired. So tired my eyelids felt weighted, more tired than I could ever remember being. So in spite of the desperation of my situation, my body and its basic need for rest reasserted itself and within moments I was asleep, with only the livestock for company.

  I woke up many times during the night, roused from slumber by the sound of animals grunting or shifting, and had to endure the experience of briefly thinking I was at home in my apartment, in my own bed, until the smell and the cold led, over and over, to the remembrance of where I actually was.

  7

  Emma

  I woke at close to dawn, my body stiff and creaky from having curled itself into a fetal position overnight in a futile attempt to keep warm. The animals were gone, let outside by someone who hadn't seen fit to wake me, or bring me anything to eat. I tried my restraints again, and found them still tightly knotted. It was dark on the lower floor of the Lord's house, with the fire long gone out and the winter wind coming through the gaps in the walls until it felt as if I had never been warm in my life.

  My thoughts were with my family almost as soon as I'd shaken off the mental torpor of a bad night's sleep. It was morning where I was, and so it was morning in 2017. They would be calling, texting, asking me if I'd booked a flight. One small point of comfort was the thought that if I didn't answer right away they might assume I was already on my way home, but even that was tenuous, given how easy it would be to call my security detail and be told I'd gone off for a drive on my own the day before and had yet to return. It dawned on me, then, that my hired security had almost certainly noted my absence already – and probably called my parents in response.

  I had to get home. I had to get home and it had to be soon, or when I did get home it was going to be a shit-show of such epic proportions I was probably going to wish I'd stayed in the 9th century, with its abundance of violent men and its distinct lack of efficient indoor heating.

  There would be no time to ponder further, though, because Esa soon came to me, with an air of annoyance about him and a chunk of stale bread in his hand.

  "God willing the Lord decides what to do with you today," he grumbled as he loosened my restraints and handed me the bread – which I shamelessly began to devour. "This is women's work, tending to prisoners, and I'm wasted spending my time on the likes of you."

  I chewed the dry bread, swallowed and then swallowed again when it refused to go down the first time. "If it's women's work," I asked Esa, who was sullenly cleaning his fingernails with a small twig while I ate, "why are you doing it?"

  He shrugged and sighed heavily. "I've no knowledge of the Lord's plans, girl. Eat your bread and keep your mouth shut."

  I didn't sense any hostility from Esa, not really. There was no underlying wish to hurt me – or even kill me – like I'd sensed with Baldric. But he didn't care, either. I was an animal to him, like one of the bristle-haired pigs, a thing to be cared for as long as it served his Lord's purposes to do so. Although he seemed to have no wish to dash my brains out with the heavy stone axe tied around his waist with a rope made of twisted straw, I didn't doubt for one second that he would do it if ordered to – and that he wouldn't lose sleep over it afterwards.

  When I was finished eating, Esa wrapped his enormous, fat fingers around my upper arm and led me outside to relieve myself. It was embarrassing, squatting down in the dirt while various curious children and animals looked on – but what could I do?

  And before I'd even managed to cover myself again, a familiar voice made itself heard.

  "Bring her to me, Esa. I'll walk the grounds with our prisoner with morning."

  That's how I found myself strolling out of the front gates with the Lord, as four guards trailed us at a not-far-enough-away-for-me-to-try-running distance. He'd ordered a woolen cape to be thrown over my shoulders, and stiff leather to be tied around my feet, the soles of which were still bloody and purple after the barefoot walk (where had my shoes gone? I must have lost them in the struggle) through the woods the previous day.

  "You've had some sleep now, and bread to eat," the Lord said. "I've given you a wool dressing and leather for your feet. Perhaps now you can bring yourself to tell me where it is you're from, and how it is you came to attack my men so savagely on my land – not once, either, but twice!"

  In the brighter light of the sunny day, I got a better look at the man who was in charge of the estate. He was slightly shorter than me, but he moved and carried himself with a sense of iron-clad confidence – the certainty of a man who knows that when he speaks, others will listen. His eyes were hazel, focused and intelligent – not only was I aware that running would be pointless, I was starting to think that lying would be, too. But how could I tell him the truth?

  "And don't tell me," he added, as if reading my mind, "that you wandered here from Essex or Wessex or any southern parts – nobody 'wanders' that far without a motive."

  "You're right," I started quietly, eager to show the Lord that I took him seriously. "I didn't wander here from the south. But I didn't come here – to your land, or your estate – with a purpose, either. It was an accident, I am looking for a friend of –"

  At that moment, there was a sudden hue and cry behind us in the woods.

  "Lord!" Someone shouted, and then another, as they rushed down the path towards us. "Lord Cyneric!"

  The voices were urgent, serious. I automatically stepped aside as 3 men came to a halt in front of my walking companion.

  "What is –" the Lord of the estate started, but one of the men cut him off. I watched his eyes widen at this apparent rudeness, and saw one of the guards raising a gloved hand to strike the man who had given offense. Before he could do so, though, another man spoke.

  "Northmen," he gasped. "My Lord –"

  "Coming from the North," a second man took up the sentence that the first was panting too hard to finish. "Across the – the marshes are frozen, Lord – the land. They're coming from the –"

  "Back!" Lord Cyneric – for I had just heard his full name for the first time – barked suddenly, breaking into a run as two of the guards each took one of my arms and swept me back along the path to the estate. "Back inside the walls!"

  The walls, I thought as I was hustled back to the estate. What walls?! It's a tall fence at best!

  The wooden gate, heavy as it was when it was pushed closed and then latched with a large
piece of tree trunk, wasn't going to hold anyone – or anything – off. Was it? A large number of women and children had taken shelter within the bosom of the Lord's house and grounds and I watched as they disappeared, some of them dragging squealing pigs or leading irritated-looking cows – into the lower floor of the house itself. Should I be going with them? All around was an air of fear and anticipation. I looked around, searching for instruction on what to do. None came.

  Before I, too, could turn and run into the security of the house, there came a noise from outside the estate and I watched as the Lord's men – and the Lord himself – heard it too. The ones that weren't already holding their weapons at the ready pulled them now from the leather and straw straps securing them around their waists. Hammers, axes, spears, swords. The guards, dressed in the heavy, dark woolens I was already learning to associate with their place in this small society, had the best and strongest-looking weapons. But it wasn't just guards standing wait for whatever was heading our way. Peasants lined up, with in their dirty tunics and their broken-toothed grimaces, raising flimsy-looking wooden spears – wooden spears! – over their heads in a way that did nothing to reassure me of their defensive prowess.

  I swiveled my head again, sensing the rising tension, and spotted Esa headed my way with a heavy axe in each of his hands. When he went to walk by me without a word I reached out and clutched at his shirt.

  "What should I do?" I whispered. "Esa, what –"

  He looked down at me then, and I could tell from his expression that he hadn't even noticed me before I'd spoken. "What are you doing out here?" He responded angrily, shoving me back towards the house. "Get inside with the women and children, girl! Now!"

  I did as I was told, breaking into a run and not quite making it before the sound of men approaching – of many, many men approaching – became so loud I knew they were just outside. It wasn't just the sound of heavy, running footsteps either. No. Horrifyingly, there was another sound – a metallic clanking that I only realized at the last second was the sound of weapons being smashed together, a sound calculated to intimidate.